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•Granulation followed by ferric loading had the best phosphate adsorption capacity.•The phosphate adsorption capacity was increased from 0 to 0.963mg/g.•Both granulation and ferric ...oxides loading obviously increased the surface areas.•Pseudo-first order model is allowable to estimate the adsorption kinetics.
Granulation of biochar powder followed by immobilization of ferric oxides on the macroporous granular biochar (Bg-FO-1) substantially enhanced phosphate removal from water. BET analysis confirmed that both granulation and ferric oxides loading can increase the surface areas and pore volumes effectively. Bg-FO-1 was proven to be a favorable adsorbent for phosphate. The phosphate adsorption capacity was substantially increased from 0mg/g of raw biochar powder to 0.963mg/g (Bg-FO-1). When the ferric oxides loading was prior to granulation, the adsorption capacity was decreased by 59–0.399mg/g, possibly due to the decrease of micropore and mesopore area as well as the overlaying of binders to the activated sites produced by ferric oxides.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) performs a good clinical practice and is showing a bright future in the treatment of diabetes mellitus (DM). TCM treatment has certain advantages of less toxicity ...and/or side effects, and herbs could provide multiple therapeutic effects. Berberine (BBR) is a classical natural medicine. In this review, we summarize the application of BBR in the treatment of DM from two aspects. First, modern pharmacological effects of BBR on glucose metabolism are summarized, such as improving insulin resistance, promoting insulin secretion, inhibiting gluconeogenesis in liver, stimulating glycolysis in peripheral tissue cells, modulating gut microbiota, reducing intestinal absorption of glucose, and regulating lipid metabolism. BBR is used to treat diabetic nephropathy (DPN), diabetic neuropathy (DN), and diabetic cardiomyopathy due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Second, the clinical application of BBR is reviewed, such as listing some clinical trials on the effectiveness and safety of BBR, explaining applicable stage and syndrome, the reasonable dose and dose formulation, and the toxicity and/or side effects. This review provides scientific evidence about BBR, as well as introducing some traditional Chinese medical theory and clinical experience, in order to guide clinician to use BBR more suitably and reasonably.
The separation of ethane from ethylene is of prime importance in the purification of chemical feedstocks for industrial manufacturing. However, differentiating these compounds is notoriously ...difficult due to their similar physicochemical properties. High-performance porous adsorbents provide a solution. Conventional adsorbents trap ethylene in preference to ethane, but this incurs multiple steps in separation processes. Alternatively, high-purity ethylene can be obtained in a single step if the adsorbent preferentially adsorbs ethane over ethylene. We herein report a metal–organic framework, MUF-15 (MUF, Massey University Framework), constructed from inexpensive precursors that sequesters ethane from ethane/ethylene mixtures. The productivity of this material is exceptional: 1 kg of MOF produces 14 L of polymer-grade ethylene gas in a single adsorption step starting from an equimolar ethane/ethylene mixture. Computational simulations illustrate the underlying mechanism of guest adsorption. The separation performance was assessed by measuring multicomponent breakthrough curves, which illustrate that the separation performance is maintained over a wide range of feed compositions and operating pressures. MUF-15 is robust, maintains its performance in the presence of acetylene, and is easily regenerated by purging with inert gas or by placing under reduced pressure.
Sleep disorder significantly affects the life quality of a large number of people but is still an underrecognized disease. Dietary nutrition is believed to play a significant impact on sleeping ...wellness. Many nutritional supplements have been used trying to benefit sleep wellness. However, the relationship between nutritional components and sleep is complicated. Nutritional factors vary dramatically with different diet patterns and depend significantly on the digestive and metabiotic functions of each individual. Moreover, nutrition can profoundly affect the hormones and inflammation status which directly or indirectly contribute to insomnia. In this review, we summarized the role of major nutritional factors, carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, and vitamins on sleep and sleep disorders and discussed the potential mechanisms.
China, the world's largest energy consumer, has been increasingly relying on pricing policies to improve energy efficiency in recent years. This paper estimates the impact of Differential Electricity ...Pricing (DEP) policy, which covers the most energy‐intensive industries in China. Under the DEP policy, electricity surcharges are imposed on enterprises using “eliminated” and “restricted” production technologies, of which the “eliminated” enterprises are more backward in technology level and are charged much higher electricity tariffs. We exploit a differences‐in‐differences approach to assess the effect of the DEP policy on fossil fuel consumption. The results indicate that the DEP policy led to a reduction in coal consumption intensity (CCI) of “eliminated” enterprises, which can be explained by the obsoleting of backward equipment in these enterprises. As for the “restricted” enterprises, it was economically optimal to continue to use “restricted” equipment; consequently, the DEP policy had no significant impact on CCI.
In this paper, we settle the longstanding open problem concerning the classification of all positive solutions to the nonlinear stationary Choquard equation
which can be considered as a certain ...approximation of the Hartree–Fock theory for a one component plasma as explained in Lieb and Lieb–Simon’s papers starting from 1970s. We first prove that all the positive solutions of this equation must be radially symmetric and monotone decreasing about some fixed point. Interestingly, to use the new method of moving planes introduced by Chen–Li–Ou, we deduce the problem into an elliptic system. As a key step, we transform this differential system into a system of integral equations with the help of Riesz and Bessel potentials, and then use the method of a moving plane in an integral form. Next, using radial symmetry, we deduce the uniqueness result from Lieb’s work. Our argument can be adapted well to study the radial symmetry of positive solutions of the equation in the generalized form
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Face image generation based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) is a hot research topic in computer vision. Existing GAN-based algorithms are constrained by training instability and mode ...collapse. Considering that particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm has good global optimization ability, we propose a generation antagonism network based on PSO algorithm to improve the training stability. More specifically, the inertia weight of particle swarm is improved by using the parameters of particle representative generator network in particle swarm optimization, and the aggregation degree of particles is judged to ensure the optimization ability of particle swarm optimization and the diversity of population. In addition, we evaluate the performance of the generator by generating quality and diversity evaluation functions to better guide the iterative updating of particle swarm optimization. Our face image generation experiment is conducted on CelebA dataset and experimental result shows the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed method.
•Inertia weight of particle swarm is improved.•Aggregation degree of particles is judged to ensure optimization ability.•Quality and diversity function is created to assess the generator’s performance.
Positioning a diverse set of building blocks in a well‐defined array enables cooperativity amongst them and the systematic programming of functional properties. The extension of this concept to ...porous metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is challenging since the installation of multiple components in a well‐ordered framework requires careful design of the lattice topology, judicious selection of building blocks, and precise control of the crystallization parameters. Herein, we report how we met these challenges to prepare the first quinary MOF structure, FDM‐8, by bottom‐up self‐assembly from two metals, ZnII and CuI, and three distinct carboxylate‐ and pyrazolate‐based linkers. With a surface area of 3643 m2 g−1, FDM‐8 contains hierarchical pores and shows outstanding methane‐storage capacity at high pressure. Furthermore, functional groups introduced on the linkers became compartmentalized in predetermined arrays in the pores of the FDM‐8 framework.
Give me five! Five distinct components were positioned in a well‐ordered multicomponent metal–organic framework in a straightforward one‐step process (see picture). The precise placement of distinct building blocks provided a framework with hierarchal pores for high‐pressure methane storage and opportunities for the systematic programming of framework functionality on the basis of chemical constituents and pore environments.
The sanitising effect of low concentration acidic electrolysed water (AEW, free available chlorine (FAC): 4 mg/L) combined with levulinic acid (LA, 3% v/v) on fresh organic lettuce during 7-day ...storage was evaluated. The combined sanitising method showed additional bactericidal efficacy against naturally existing microbiota, while LA alone and combined with AEW could reduce survival population of Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Listeria innocua Seeliger ATCC 33090 inoculated on lettuce surface effectively, with 3.5–4.0 log CFU/g reduction for both during storage. Moreover, the modified Gompertz model provided a good fitness to the sanitising results during storage, with highest R2 in AEW group for E. coli (0.99) and in combination group for L. innocua (1.00), respectively. In addition, the physicochemical properties of organic lettuce treated by each sanitising treatment were not changed significantly during storage. Epifluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed that the cell permeability and morphology of E. coli and L. innocua were changed after sanitising treatments, with damaged cell membrane and disordered cellular structure in different degrees. Besides, the size of cells became smaller after combined sanitising treatment, with 2.12 and 1.24 μm2 for E. coli and L. innocua, respectively, indicating some cytoplasm leakage. Sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) showed the number and intensities of the protein bands of E. coli were reduced, while those of L. innocua remained similar after sanitising treatments. The results suggest that low concentration AEW combined with LA is a potential effective approach to sanitise organic produce.
•Low concentration acidic electrolysed water was combined with levulinic acid.•Combination treatment showed broad spectrum bactericidal effect on organic lettuce.•Cell membrane permeability and morphologies were damaged by combination treatment.•Whole cell protein profiles were changed under combination treatment.•Combination treatment is promising for sanitisation in organic produce industry.
A new method for the synthesis of formamides has been developed through electrochemical decarboxylative N-formylation of amines with glyoxylic acid. This protocol provides an efficient approach to ...formamides with a broad range of functional group tolerance under ambient conditions.
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